Social media marketing is now the number one means of building your brand, increasing your sales, and driving your website’s traffic.
Among all strategies for marketing a product/service on social media, Influencer marketing has a great potential for brand awareness and boosting business. It includes getting endorsements from influential people/organizations who are highly engaged with social users especially your niche audiences. It has been one of the most effective ways for marketing on social platforms and become a lucrative business and large industry in the last decade. For example, businesses are earning $6.50 for each $1 paid for influencer marketing, based on InfluencerMarketingHub.
Types of influencers
Four different types of influencers have emerged on social networks: Mega-influencers, Macro-influencers, Micro-influencers, and the most recent of them Nano-influencers. Accordingly, there is severe competition in this industry for being an influencer or being more influential to be able to earn more money. More followers, a higher rate of engagement, and of course, more relevancy are the most important characteristics to choose these kinds of influencers. According to Social Tradia, many people on Instagram want to become an influencer to be able to sell their Instagram account and make money.
Although about 90 percent of marketers believe that influencer marketing has higher ROI compared to other marketing strategies, there are signs for its downfall or at least a sweeping change. If you had followed the news about the matter, you must have understood some aspects of the black market behind influencer marketing.
For example, a well-known influencer on Instagram who seems very funny when tasting different cuisines has been recently scandalized by his followers for attempting to report and block one of his competitors. There are countless examples in this field like accidentally copy-pasting instruction, not complying with rules of the product, paying for fake followers, sexual engagements, bribery, purchasing accounts, etc.
Therefore, the influencer industry suffers a lack of trust as the key factor in reaching out to customers. Many believe that this kind of influencer marketing has become saturated and weakened by scandals and frauds. “Trust” is now an issue that is putting influencer marketing strategy on the verge of failure.
Apart from the trust problem, the amount of money influencers request is increasing by the day. As statistics show, in 2020, businesses will spend 5 fold more than they spent in 2017 to have influencers advertise their products and services online.
Surprisingly, although businesses are spending more money by the day, people’s attention to influencers is decreasing. These prices are not affordable for many companies especially for startups and small size businesses.
Trust and price
Therefore, these two main factors (trust and price) are leading to a new era in influencer marketing on social media. Expensive paid influencer marketing is highly likely to be replaced by a reverse trend called “Organic Influencer”. This is a solution for gaining more trust by paying less money. In this organic strategy, you have to build an authentic collaboration with influential or even common people, without concerning about any payment.
In fact, organic influencers are loyal customers to whom your products/services appeal. They usually are willing to create content about your brand mentioning their experiences of using your products/services. They can be your brand advocates who do not want any payment. Apart from the number of followers, their true interest in your brand can build authenticity and influence the trust of other customers.
Remember that “social media influencers” are not necessarily the most influential people around us. Traditional influencers may have the ability to impress audiences initially, but the sales funnel is something different. The purchase will happen when a real interest and trust is created. This is exactly the real difference between an organic influencer and a paid-influencer. Actually, when people see their family members, flatmates, colleagues, friends, and generally their peers happily use a brand, they are highly likely to want that product/service. Based on stackla.com, user-generated content can change purchase decisions of about 80 percent of people, as opposed to influencers’ posts which affect less than 10 percent of social media users.
Another important matter is that the ratio of the average engagement rates for each post to the number of followers is surprisingly low for paid-influencers. This might be a bit weird because many people think that they are highly engaged with their audience. But you have to know that real posts from common customers get a lot of likes, comments, and shares compared to their followers. Actually, social media users are constantly watching a lot of similar sponsored posts from traditional influencers and cannot pay a lot of attention to them. But, a post from familiar everyday customers can draw their attention the most.
Organic influencers
Now Organic influencers are great options for businesses with limited resources. Because these influencers consent to advertise your products/services just for your friendship with them or better still for the quality of the brand itself.
So, if you want to know how to promote your brand and boost your business, we strongly recommend you to collaborate with organic influencers. First, you have set aside time to find a perfect match for your brand. The wisest course of action is to select niche relevant influential people who have used your brand already. This would help you to build strong customer trust because these influencers have a more related audience. Of course, more common customers can also be of use as it comes from the word “organic”.
Then you have to make a close friendship with your selected influencers so that they feel they are part of your strategy, not a simple marketer. Bear in mind that although there are not paid-influencers, you have to offer some benefits to them. For example, you can invite them to your event or experiential marketing campaigns as especial guests. Also, offering free products/services for a limited time can be of interest to them. Remember that when they spend their time to do something for you, you have to say thankfulness to them.
Analyze your performance
Finally, it is highly recommended to analyze your performance on social media when using organic influencer marketing. You have to compare your results with previous strategies to be able to optimize your activities. Using Analytics tools available on different social media platforms or even Google analytics can help you to track your ROI when marketing via social networks.
Considering the above sentences, you can decide whether an organic influencer is your choice for the upcoming year or you are still interested in traditional influencer marketing.
